Default Colors by Keyboard Shortcut

[JDW]

In Photoshop I need only hit the "D" key to switch the Foreground Color to BLACK and the Background Color to WHITE (in the color picker/palette, I mean).  I see that when I open a new document in Affinity Photo, it uses the same BLACK and WHITE colors by default too.  (In Affinity Photo, I am talking about the 2 round overlapping color circles at the top left corner of the "Color" tab.)  But when I change those colors and then press the "D" key, nothing happens.  How do I revert them back to the default BLACK and WHITE?  And can I assign a keyboard shortcut to accomplish that?

 

Thanks.

[globalmatt]

Same question here. How do I quickly revert to the default black & white colours like I can in Photoshop?

[JDW]

Matt, as you can see, I posted that question back in July 2015 and no one gave me the courtesy of a reply.

I am enthusiastic about the Affinity apps, which is why I bought both of them.  But I must say I don't use them very much because of unanswered questions and unimplemented features that I deem important.  I even bought both of their books!  I would be overjoyed if things could change though, not only for my own personal benefit, but for the benefit of every Affinity app user worldwide.

Don't let this hold you back from asking questions in this forum though.  Serif needs a pounding (a cordial and intelligent pounding, of course) to get the ball rolling in the right direction.  If they want to capture more customers from Adobe the solution really is simple.  All they have to do is start answering questions from Adobe users and implementing their feature requests.  And I'm of the strong opinion that it shouldn't take 3 or more years to do that.

Best wishes!

[hannah]

ohhhhhhh, I know that! took me so long to find out. I have to check and will come back here. promise. short answer you have to set your key-shorts yourself but the places are tricky to find. give me some minutes...

[hannah]

So, I did it for AfD, but I think I found the same settings in AfP. They have this double-dropdown menus which makes it really confusing, but you can defind your shortcuts for "Set fill to..." and "Set fill None" for deleting a fill.

Go to preferences>keyboard shortcuts and select in the menus what you see in the screenshots (one shows AfP, the other AfD).

Hope that helps!

[JDW]

Thank you for the help, but I require a little more.  How exactly do we ADD new keyboard shortcuts?

I have Affinity Photo open and that Preferences page open, but I see no easy way to add new ones.  You'd think there'd be an "Add" or "+" button somewhere!

It's probably so obviously I cannot see it, but the fact is, I cannot see it!

Thanks.

[Uncle Mez]

Hi @JDW and @globalmatt I also through the same as @hannah gave to you here and it works. 

I personally never used or knew about that option back to Photoshop but your question and the provided answer brought a great solution. 

Now I would suggest Serif team working on affinity to make this default shortcut out of the box in next releases so don't do it manually or just forget to set it up and mourn of not having it implemented. 

Thank you guys, this is life saving. 

 

[Uncle Mez]

8 minutes ago, JDW said:

Thank you for the help, but I require a little more.  How exactly do we ADD new keyboard shortcuts?

I have Affinity Photo open and that Preferences page open, but I see no easy way to add new ones.  You'd think there'd be an "Add" or "+" button somewhere!

It's probably so obviously I cannot see it, but the fact is, I cannot see it!

Thanks.

@JDW when in shortcut > miscellaneous you select the rectangle at the end of the line "set fill to white and black" it will turn blue then you simply type the letter D on your keyboard and that's it. 

No shift key pressing, simply type in letter D in highlighted zone. 

Then close and test. 

[hannah]

2 minutes ago, JDW said:

How exactly do we ADD new keyboard shortcuts?

On the right side in the line of the shortcut there is a rectangular box, where other shortcuts are already listed.
It's simple, you just click in this box, in the same line where it says "Set Fill in Black and White", and click on exactly the keys on your keyboard that you wanna use later.
So for using a point as a shortcut, you have to type this character (a point) inside this box.

[globalmatt]

Thanks Hannah, that looks useful. I will give it a go!

It would still be good to have this shortcut built into Affinity Photo of course. 

[JDW]

23 minutes ago, Arnaud Mez said:

@JDW when in shortcut > miscellaneous you select the rectangle at the end of the line "set fill to white and black" it will turn blue then you simply type the letter D on your keyboard and that's it. 

I guess I need to read the documentation when I have more time because I don't understand what you mean.  For truly, when I have the Preferences dialog open and the Shortcuts showing, the only way to access "Miscellaneous" is to click the popup in the upper left and choose Miscellaneous, which presents me with 6 buttons that say "Reset Fills, Reset Brushes, etc."

23 minutes ago, hannah said:

On the right side in the line of the shortcut there is a rectangular box, where other shortcuts are already listed.
It's simple, you just click in this box, in the same line where it says "Set Fill in Black and White", and click on exactly the keys on your keyboard that you wanna use later.
So for using a point as a shortcut, you have to type this character (a point) inside this box.

Again, I need to read the documentation because I don't follow.  Specifically, there is no "Set Fill in Black and White."  Here is all I see:

[hannah]

You are not there yet. Where it says "Affinity Photo", right bellow "Photo", that's a second drop-down menu. You have to set it to "Miscellaneous".

[hannah]

you might have to scroll down, Miscellaneous is the very last menu-point, that might be not visible if your screen-resolution is on the lower side. If that's the case drag the whole Preferences-Window to the top, as high as you can and then open the drop-down-menu again. You find it? I'd really like you to find it

 

[Uncle Mez]

7 minutes ago, hannah said:

You are not there yet. Where it says "Affinity Photo", right bellow "Photo", that's a second drop-down menu. You have to set it to "Miscellaneous".

@JDW this is Exactly what we meant. 

Unfold by clicking the section below and choose miscellaneous, from there you will see the shortcut list will change and you will find the line we talked about and simply follow @hannah steps to setup the thing. 

Unfortunately I can't draw things to help you right now,  it's 3AM on my side and reading this using an Android with lower capabilities. 

Maybe during the day I will make step by step kind of tuto to help (if no one brought it already) 

[JDW]

Thank you for the guidance.  Problem solved!

(And thanks to toltec below too.)

[toltec]

3 hours ago, JDW said:

Again, I need to read the documentation because I don't follow.  Specifically, there is no "Set Fill in Black and White."  Here is all I see:

This is the preferences you should see. The menu set to Miscellaneous so Set Fill to Black and White appears.

I set my shortcut to Ctrl + Shift + X

 

Note though that there is an alternative (and IMHO better) way of quickly choosing black or white. Use the Swatches panel, rather than the Colour panel.

The advantage is, unlike setting the Colour panel to black and white, any colours you have picked or set in the colour wells, remain there. So four colours (or rather, two colours plus permanent black and white plus transparent) are instantly available to you. Plus of course, you can set your own swatches.

It is possible to set a keyboard shortcut for the Swatches panel, so it instantly appears.

That is also in Miscellaneous but you have to scroll down to find it. It's called "Swatches Page" for some reason.

That instantly brings the Swatches "page" to the front for quick selection of all your colours.

Swatches is actually a much faster way of working because unlike using the Colour panel, where you have to click on the colour panel, then use a shortcut to set the colour wells to black and white, when you click on Swatches (or use a shortcut) black and white is already there, permanently.

[R C-R]

11 hours ago, JDW said:

Again, I need to read the documentation because I don't follow.

A bit late with my reply but the built-in help topic Customizing keyboard shortcuts (link to US English Mac online version) provides some help with how this works. The topic is in the Workspace > Customize section of the table of contents.

 It also helps to know that if an item appears on the menubar in a Persona they appear in that same order in the second dropdown that has the same name as on the menubar. So for example, with the first dropdown set to "Photo" & the second to "Document" all the shortcut entries on the "Document" menubar are listed in that order.

[livetheshot]

@hannah I can't give you more than one thanks. This has been bugging me for a long time that it didn't occur to me to look under keyboard shortcuts